less. In a sense this theory puts the coping-stone upon Christological development. If we arc warranted in regarding the Second Person of the Godhead as in very deed “Himself vouchsafing to be made,” that great Becoming cannot well be suspended upon a contingency which might or might not arise; and theologians in general regard the sin of man as such a contingent event. Incarnation almost demands to be speculatively interpreted as the necessary last stage in the self-manifestation and self-imparting of God. Yet interest in man's moral necessities threatens to be lost amid this cosmological wisdom. Theology pushed too far may overleap itself. Those who shrink from the old confident assertion, “Christ would not have become incarnate but for man's sin,” might claim to say, from reverence and not from evasiveness, ignoramus. On the other hand, the type of thought which would perfect Christianity in the form of a philosophy, and subordinates Atonement to Incarnation, is pledged to this doctrine that Incarnation was a rational necessity. Such speculative views are associated with the revival of another traditional piece of mysticism—the Holy Spirit the Copula or bond of union in the Godhead. There is no such assertion anywhere in the New Testament.
For modern German theories of Kenosis among Lutheran and Reformed, see A. B. Bruce's Humiliation of Christ. Basing on the language of Phil. ii. 7, they teach, in different forms, that the son of God became a man under human limitations at conception or birth, and resumed divine predicates at His exaltation. It might be put in this way—a really Divine personality, a really human experience. Strong as are the terms of Phil. ii. 7, we can hardly suppose that St Paul had a metaphysical theory of Christ's person in view. In Great Britain and America many have adopted this theory. It is often taught, e.g. that Christ's statements on Old Testament literature are to be interpreted in the light of the Kenosis. The enemies of the theory insist that, while it safeguards the unity of Christ's personal experience at any one point, it breaks up by absolute gulfs the continuity of experience and destroys the identity of the person. Indeed, those forms of the theory, which give us a Logos in heaven (John iii. 13) along with the humbled or Incarnate Christ on earth,, seem to fail of unifying experience even at the single point. Other suggestions in explanation of the mystery have been : a gradual Incarnation, the process not being complete until Christ's exaltation (I. A. Dorner's earlier view); impersonal pre-existence of the Logos, who became personal—compare and contrast Marcellus of Ancyra—at the Incarnation (W. Beyschlag's earlier view, practically adopted by Dorner in his later days); Jesus the man who was absolutely filled with the consciousness of God (Schleiermacher) ; Jesus not to be defined in terms of " nature," either human or divine, but as the perfect fulfiller of God's absolute purpose (A. Ritschl's view, practically adopted in later days by Beyschlag). The orthodoxy which refuses all new theories may look for help to the pathological dissociation of personality, or at least (e.g. J. O. Dykes in Expository Times, Jan. 1906; Sanday Christologies Ancient and Modern) to the mystery of the subconscious.
We have now to look at Protestant theology in its dealing with questions in which it is more immediately or more fully interested. In the early period known as the Protestant scholasticism there was no desire for progress in doctrine. Challenged by Arminianism in Holland, the Calvinistic theology replied in the Confession of Dort ; at which Synod English delegates were present. This creed may almost rank with the Lutheran Formula of Concord as summing up post-Reformation Protestant orthodoxy. But the direct fate of Arminian teachers or churches was no measure of their influence. One proof of the latter is found in Archbishop Laud and the English High Churchmen of his school, who throw off the Augustinian or Calvinistic yoke in favour of an Arminian theology. Lutheranism had set the example of this change. Later editions of Melanchthon’s Loci Communes, generously protected by Luther, drop out or tone down Luther’s favourite doctrine of predestination. The Augustinian clock was running down, as usual. In the 18th century “Illumination”—an age which piqued itself upon its “enlightenment,” and which did a good deal to drive away obscurity, though at the cost of losing depth—Deism outside the churches is matched by a spirit of cool common-sense within them, a spirit which is not confined to professed Rationalists. Civil wars and theological wranglings had wearied men. Supposed universal truths and natural certainties were in fashion. The plainest legacy of the 18th century to later times has been a humaner spirit in theology. Christian teachers during the 19th century grew more reticent in regard to future punishment. The doctrine when taught is frequently softened; sometimes universalism is taught. A movement towards Unitarianism. Arianism and then towards Socinianism (Joseph Priestley, Nath. Lardner, W. E. Channing) among English Presbyterians and American Congregationalists left permanent results in the shape of new non-subscribing churches and a diffusion of Unitarian theology (J. Martineau). The 18th century is very differently interpreted in different quarters. Orthodox evangelicalism is tempted to view it as an apostasy or an aberration. On the other hand, not merely agnostics like Leslie Stephen but Christian theologians of the Left like Ernst Troeltsch regard it as the time when supernaturalism began decisively to go to pieces, and the “modern” spirit to assert its authority even over religion. A. Ritschl, again, claims that neglected elements of Christianity were striving for utterance, particularly a serious belief in God as Father and in His providential care. It was not, says Ritschl, a turning away from Christian motives, but a turning towards neglected Christian motives. This view seems logically to involve Ritschl's belief, that it is not the light of reason but the revelation of Christ which warrants the assertion of God's fatherly providential goodness.
Whether temporary or permanent, a great reaction from the
18th-century spirit set in. It was partly on Augustinian lines,
partly on the lines of what the Germans call Pietism.
Under John and Charles Wesley, a system known as
Evangelical Arminianism was worked out in 18th-century
England, strongly Augustinian in its doctrines of sin and
The Evangelical revival.
atonement, modern Augustinian in its doctrine of conversion,
strongly anti-Augustinian in its rejection of absolute predestination.
Within the Anglican Church, however, the new revival
was Augustinian and Calvinistic, till it gave place to a
Church revival, the echo or the sister of the Ultramontane
movement in the Church of Rome. The
vigorous practical life of the modern school of HighThe Oxford Movement.
Church Anglicanism, initiated by John Keble, W. Hurrell
Froude, J. H. Newman, E. B. Pusey, is associated with a
theological appeal to the tradition of the early centuries, and
with a strongly medieval emphasis upon sacramental grace. In
Germany, dislike of the Prussian policy of “Union”—the
legal fusion of the Lutheran and Reformed
Churches—gave life to a High Lutheran reactionLutheran opposition
to the “Union”.
which has shown some vigour in thought and some
asperity in judgment (E. W. Hengstenberg; H. A. C. Haevernick;
dogmatic in G. Thomasius and F. A. Philippi ; more
liberal type in C. F. A. Kahnis; history of doctrine in
G. Thomasius) . The most distinguished of the theologians classed
as “mediating” are C. Ullmann, C. I. Nitzsch and Julius
Muller. Later evangelicalism in the English-speaking lands
gives up belief in predestination, or at least, with very few
exceptions, holds it less strongly. That change is clearly a
characteristic feature of 19th-century theology.
Many of the movements just mentioned are, at least in design, pure reactions involving no new thoughts. Apart from apologetics or single doctrines like that of the Atonement, the task of rethinking Christian theology upon to the great scale has been left chiefly to German science, philosophical and historical. If the task is to be accomplished, Proposals to unify theology. then, whatever merit in detail belongs to wise and learned writers already referred to, it would seem that some one central principle must become dominant. This consideration, as far as an outsider can judge, excludes any formal Roman Catholic co-operation in the suggested task. So long as theological truth is divided into the two compartments of natural or rational theology and incomprehensible' revealed mysteries, there is no possibility of carrying through a unity of principle. Again, many Protestants rule themselves out of participation in the search for unified doctrine. It is a modern commonplace—Loofs dates the formula from about 1825—that
